Cost and Effect
by kahlen369
Summary: "One event can change a lifetime." The saying had already proven true for Nabiki once, with her mother's death, and it was proven true again when an ordinary date went horribly wrong. The result was a Nabiki Tendo that had been changed irreversibly, for the better and for worse.


**A/N: I had the idea for this story, and this entire first chapter, typed up forever ago. I have a few more bits and pieces also already written for further chapters, but not much more, so any more updates will probably be super sporadic. But I'm cleaning up my fanfiction folder and this is one of the stories I've always liked and wanted to continue, so let's see.**

* * *

Nabiki Tendo stood naked in the bathroom, looking at herself in the mirror. The woman who stared back was nearly unrecognizable. She was noticeably paler than usual, her normally light creamy skin had turned nearly chalk white. Probably the blood loss, she thought with clinical detachment.

Her unusual deathly pallor had caused the angry red line along her throat to stand out. Thankfully, despite its gruesome appearance, it was merely a flesh wound and only barely bleeding. However, its sight in that particular location reminded her of just how much worse it could've been. She could still feel the blade pressed against her neck. It had been far too close for her liking, she thought with a shudder, no matter his claims that he wouldn't kill her.

She let her gaze drift to the rest of her body. There was a smattering of mottled bruises running along her torso, and larger purple ones on her thighs. Though they throbbed painfully, they weren't as bad as they looked. The most serious injury was a deep gash along her right leg that would need more medical attention later on. All in all, she looked like some kind of human torture dummy. It was still nothing compared to how she felt emotionally.

Nabiki would be wearing long-sleeved high-neck sweaters for quite some time.

There was one part of her body she didn't want to look at. The state of her most private place of all was not something she wanted to contemplate. She already had a good idea of how it must've looked from how painful and sore she felt so she felt no need to add a visual that would make the cold fury rolling violently through her veins even worse.

Nabiki didn't believe in self-deception. She believed it was a complete waste of time and effort. If there was a horrible truth to be faced, she thought it was best to face it head on and find ways to remedy it.

Years of interacting with the King of Self-Deception himself, Tatewaki Kuno, had only intensified her feelings.

So the truth was:

 _He raped her._

She shivered, and woman in the reflection stared back like a ghost. The admission was like a dam breaking and the memories came flooding with all the force of a tidal wave.

* * *

If Nabiki were a better woman, she might've felt guilty at taking advantage of such an obviously naïve guy like her date. As it stood, however, the Ice Queen of Furinkan High School felt only the slightest amusement at her date's naivety as she manipulated him into spending all of his money on her. In her opinion, if you were stupid enough to let yourself get fleeced, you deserved it. Besides, after dating a dozen or so boys out of most of their savings, she had gained quite a reputation. By now, most boys knew enough to never ask her out again. It was a rare occasion and she was going to milk it for all it was worth.

It was a knife.

As someone who bore witness to inhuman displays of strength, speed and agility she could only dream about ever attaining on a daily basis, she understood her own physical weaknesses very well. Unlike some other people, however, she was never envious of their ability or resentful of her own limitations. In all these years, she had never really regretted her decision to give up the Art after her mother's untimely death. In fact, after seeing all the unbridled chaos the martial artists of Nerima were caught up in nearly every day, she sometimes thought she had dodged quite the bullet.

Right then and there, however, she felt the bitter pang of regret mixing with the unfamiliar nausea of fear. If she'd been Ranma or Akane, she could've easily kicked the knife away and taken him down by now. Instead, because she'd chosen business over the Art, she was forced to cower at the glint of steel like a

At one point, she'd been the best martial artist of the three Tendo sisters. Applying her natural guile and cunning to her fighting had allowed her to defeat opponents who were stronger (Akane) and more experienced (Kasumi) than her.

Her father, back when he'd also been their Sensei, had told her once that out of the three of them, Nabiki was the one who was most likely to become a Master of the Art and inherit the dojo. Kasumi was too soft-hearted to ever be a great fighter, and Akane was too easily distracted by her emotions (particularly her anger).

Nabiki was reduced to being a typical Damsel in Distress. Only, this time, she didn't think any Knight in Shining Armor was going to be able to save her.

Nabiki had only ever felt true, mind-numbing fear three times in her entire life.

The first time, she was seven years old, and still a practitioner of the Art. It was the first time she'd ever encountered an earthquake. No amount of martial arts could ever hope to defeat Mother Nature in her wrath. Even to this day, she could still remember the frightening display of Mother Nature's power.

The second time, she was ten years old, and far too jaded and cynical for her age. It was the day of her mother's death.

The third and final time, she was fourteen years old and it had been a little under two years since her mother passed away. Her death had been hard on everyone in the family, and life without her had been far from easy. Perhaps the biggest change had been their roles in the family.

Nabiki and Kasumi had both chosen to permanently quit the Art about nine months after their mother's death.

It had been a matter of prudence.

Even though Kasumi was only fourteen at the time, as the eldest of the three sisters, she had chosen to prioritize maintaining their home life. She took over most of mother's duties, like cooking their meals and cleaning the house, and became more maternal in her affections to both her two younger sisters and their distraught father.

Nabiki had always been smart beyond her years. She was a straight A student. But her true intelligence lay in her ability to read people and turn situations into her favor. The moment Nabiki had laid eyes on her mother's lifeless body had been the final coffin, as it was, on her childhood. It had been a long time coming. The illness had taken its toll on her young psyche, and her natural inclination for cynicism had taken over. It had proven points that she had already known. Life was unfair. Good people died. The world didn't care. They were all hard truths that she'd been forced to accept.

But father had been a mess. He couldn't take care of himself, let alone his three young daughters. So they had to take care of themselves. By unspoken agreement, Kasumi and Nabiki had agreed to shelter Akane from the brunt of it. Try to let their baby sister some childhood still, if they could not. Kasumi took over mother's former duties, and Nabiki took over their father's. She handled all finances, and scrounged up cash from wherever she could. As the years went on, that burden grew heavier and harder to handle. Fewer people were willing to lend their money or helping hands, and she'd been forced to look into… alternative means.

When she was fourteen, that had involved a very questionable dealing with a very questionable man. Thanks to a gangster with some sympathy, she had managed to walk away from the encounter without a scratch, if also no rich, but was one of the better outcomes so she counted her blessings when she could. The entire incident that had taught her just which lines she should not, would not cross. That was the third, and last, time she would ever feel fear, she had promised herself.

But now. _Now_ , she felt the cold steel digging into her neck, she'd felt cold, dead fear like a lead weight in the pit of her stomach.

She was a martial artist once. Seven years of disuse was a long and short time.

She attempted to dig up the very memories she had sought to bury in the recesses of her mind.

The last time she had practiced any of these techniques, she'd been ten years old.

She was using moves that were meant for someone much smaller and lighter, with much shorter reach. With her seventeen year old body, she was constantly overreaching and overbalancing. She would've been better off just throwing punches blindly instead of attempting to use the now ill-fitting techniques that she only half-remembered in the first place.

It was hardly surprising that despite almost ten years (father had started the training as soon as they could crawl) of former martial arts training, she was easily taken down by an untrained teenage boy holding a knife.

In times of high stress, the Ice Queen of Furinkan High as befitting her name, turned cold as ice. Her anger was cool, deadly fury.

She had fought back as best as she could and she had failed, miserably.


End file.
